Latin American History Commons^™

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

In the preamble of the 2024 presidential election seasons in both the United States and Mexico, there has been an increase in aggressive outspoken expression by national leaders regarding how to best handle the issue of drugs and drug use across the Western hemisphere. These types of sweeping policies are often credited to President Richard Nixon, who on June 18th, 1971, initiated his “War on Drugs,” a global policy campaign intended to address the production, distribution, and consumption of the illicit drug trade. Existing scholarship on this topic has extensively analyzed the early years of the American war on drugs …

The Final Straw: The Battle For Puerto Rico, Samantha N. Marrero

Theses

The Common Wealth of Puerto Rico has undergone tremendous amounts of oppression. The capstone will evaluate the policies imposed on the commonwealth by the United States, and the actions revolutionaries or independentistas took to have a liberated Puerto Rico

From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne

Honors Projects

This thesis studies the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations from 1958-1961. Mainly drawing from primary sources from the National Archives, it seeks to answer and understand how and why relations deteriorated so rapidly. It pushes against the common belief that U.S.-Cuban relations were doomed from the start, instead highlighting in Chapter One Fidel Castro’s rise to power (and Fulgencio Batista’s fall from power) and revealing that the U.S. government was not entirely against Castro’s seizure of power. Chapter Two explores Castro’s first year in power and the (futile) attempts made by both governments to keep relations alive. Finally, it closes with …

U.S. Hegemonic Control In Latin America: The 1973 Coup In Chile, Seth Wilbur

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean armed forces staged a coup d’état against their democratically elected and first socialist president, Salvador Allende. The coup ended in Allende’s death and seventeen years of military dictatorship under the auspices of General Augusto Pinochet. Although seemingly a domestic affair, the United States executive branch under the leadership of President Richard Nixon played a significant role in facilitating the coup and it is unlikely the coup would have occurred without U.S. support. While contemporary sources still point to American fears over communist incursion in the western hemisphere as the principal reason for U.S. involvement …

“An Exercise In International Extortion”: Operation “Intercept” And Nixon’S 1969 War On Drugs, Justin M. Reid

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

When the former senator and vice president assumed the Oval Office in January 1969, President Richard M. Nixon inherited a nation in crisis with drugs playing a central role. At a campaign stop a few months earlier, Nixon announced to a packed convention center in Anaheim, CA, that if elected president he would end the flow of the illicit drugs coming into the United States “decimating a generation of young Americans.”

True to his word, Nixon moved aggressively after his election victory to refocus the federal drug enforcement bureaucracy on drug source control, blaming Mexico as the main culprit. On …

The Washington Consensus: Conceptions Of Power And Failure In Argentina, Samaira G. Wilson

Senior Projects Fall 2022

By holding great economic power over smaller states and justifying it by saying they are helping modernize them, the U.S. leaves many countries cleaning up a mess they helped make. The Washington Consensus failed systematically largely because of its failure to understand development in developing countries. The objective of these policies were to increase GDP in Argentina, yet economic growth favored the wealthy which led to more poverty, inequality and unemployment. The responsibility to promote democratic and equitable development, as well as sustained increases in living standards, was completely neglected. Why did U.S. policy fail to deliver on its goals? …

A Holy Tug Of War: Us Christians Against The Contras (1970-1990), Mark Maxwell Brown

Theses and Dissertations--History

After the Sandinista revolution of 1979 ousted the longstanding Somoza dynasty of Nicaragua, the small Central American nation became an obsession of US foreign policy as the Reagan administration committed its efforts to deposing the leftist revolutionary government through the funding and training of the Contras, a counter-revolutionary guerrilla group. With the Cold War at a boiling point, continued control and influence over Central America became a pillar of US anticommunist agenda. Uniquely, many of the most ardent critics of the Reagan administration during this period of violent intervention were Christian missionaries. The Sandinistas were able to defeat the Somoza …

Struggle For Sovereignty: An African-American Colonization Attempt And Delicate Independence In Mid-Nineteenth Century Central America, Matthew D. Harris

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis uses a series of United States foreign relations documents centered around an 1862 attempt by Abraham Lincoln to colonize parts of Central America with freed African Americans. Traditionally, these communications have been used by historians for U.S. foreign relations or Black resettlement history. Here, instead, this collection is used to display the major threats to Central American sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century in their own words. The collection reveals that two of the threats were foreign imperialistic thought and racial instability. However, the third, and ultimately most destabilizing threat to the region, was the five nations' rivalry amongst …

Charlie Wilson's First War: Challenging Carter's Human Rights Policy Through His Support For Anastasio Somoza Debayle, 1977-79., Sherman J. Sadler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the support of Congressman Charles Wilson, D-TX, for the Nicaraguan government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle from March 1977 to July 1979. A narrative of Wilson's actions and motivations it relies heavily on his congressional papers for primary sources. This work argues that Wilson was motivated by his personal anti-Communist beliefs to challenge the perceived biased application of the Carter Administration's human rights policy against the Somoza regime. He saw the administration's abandonment of Nicaragua, a traditional Cold War ally after four decades of loyal support, as directly contributing to the rise of …

Unintended Consequences: U.S. Interference In El Salvador, The Salvadoran Diaspora, And The Role Of Activist Community Organizations In Establishing A Salvadoran-American Community In Los Angeles, Blake Bergstrom

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The U.S. intervention in El Salvador had a number of unintended consequences, some negative and some positive, that still have a great impact on the U.S., El Salvador, and the international community as a whole today. Although the focus of the mass media is on the negative unintended consequences, the positive really outweigh the negative. These so-called unintended consequences began with a massive increase in immigration to escape the violent human rights violations and political persecutions of El Salvador’s Civil War. This migration to the U.S. in the 1980s is referred to as the Salvadoran Diaspora, which led to an …

From Riots To Sovereignty: United States Policy Makers Ideas, Perceptions, And Reactions To The Panamanian Struggle For Sovereignty, William Edward Humphrey

Graduate Theses

After the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 the Panamanian people had to live in an occupied country. The U.S. took control of a ten-mile stretch of land surrounding a canal of immense importance to world trade. The U.S. policy makers ignored the pleas, complaints, and demonstrations of the Panamanian people as they struggled for sovereignty in their country. This thesis will show, through the use of primary sources from the U.S. government that U.S. policy makers refused to see the importance of sovereignty to the Panamanian people until the 1964 Panamanian Flag Riots. After that episode, U.S. policy makers dramatically shifted …

Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner

Masters Theses

U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a …

Entangled Trade: Peaceful Spanish-Osage Relations In The Missouri River Valley, 1763-1780, Maryellen Ruth Harman

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis examines peaceful Spanish-Osage and Spanish-Missouri relations with an emphasis on the period 1763-1780. Using specific primary source documentation, this study highlights frequent reports from Lieutenant-Governors stationed at St. Louis concerning the thriving fur trade and positive Osage economic exchanges with Spanish-licensed traders. The multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial inhabitants and the entangled nature of trade and political interactions in the Missouri River Valley region, specifically in the Upper Louisiana capital, St. Louis, complicated and sometimes undermined peace. During this period, however, the Spanish, Osage, and Missouri nations, sought to overcome these misunderstandings and emphasized instead the mutual benefits of trade …

Grave Breaches: American Military Intervention In The Late Twentieth- Century And The Consequences For International Law, Calla Cameron

CMC Senior Theses

The duality of the United States’ relationship with international criminal law and human rights atrocities is a fascinating theme that weaves through all of American history, but most distinctly demonstrates the contradictory nature of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. America is both protector of human rights and perpetrator of human rights atrocities, global police force and aggressor. The Cold War exacerbated the tensions caused by American military dominance. The international political and physical power of the American military allowed the United States to do as it pleased in the 20th century with few consequences, …

The Business Of Empire: American Capitalists, The Nicaraguan Canal, And The Monroe Doctrine, 1849-1858, Jonathan D. Del Buono

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. policymakers designed foreign policy to enhance the reach of American commerce and create a commercial empire in and through Latin America. To create this empire U.S policymakers wanted to construct a canal through Central America, which they envisioned as a joint enterprise between American businesses and the federal government. In 1849, Cornelius Vanderbilt and his associates reserved a charter from the Nicaraguan government to build and operate a canal and transit route through their county. Yet competition between varied business interests prompted the U.S. destruction of the Nicaraguan port city of San Juan del Norte …

It Happened At El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke The Story That Washington Refused To Believe, Naomi Rubel Lachance

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to the Division of Languages and Literature and the Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Discovering Brazil In Twentieth-­Century France, 1930-­1964: Franco-­Brazilian Cultural Politics In The Era Of Decolonization, Andrew R. Dausch

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a case study in the international exchange of ideas. It begins with the 1934-­‐1940 French University Mission to establish the University of São Paulo—Brazil's premier institution of higher learning. I argue that the experiences and intellectual networks that French intellectuals formed with Brazilian social scientists in the 1930s provided a conceptual framework for thinking about France and its role in a postcolonial world. Brazil and its intellectual traditions forced thinkers such as Claude Lévi-­‐Strauss, Fernand Braudel, and Roger Bastide to engage race and racial politics in a new key. By demonstrating the substantial links between Brazilian and …

Reconsidering Operation Condor: Cross-Border Military Cooperation And The Defeat Of The Transnational Left In Chile And Argentina During The 1970s, Georgia C. Whitaker

Honors Projects

In this study of the roots of Operation Condor, I track the development of this unusual military alliance forged by six Southern Cone governments (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay) during the 1970s, as well as the push-and-pull relationship between the transnational migration of political militants and the military’s impetus for collaboration. While most accounts of Condor focus on the United States as the operation’s primary orchestrator, I contend that initial motivation for the type of cooperation that Condor would later formalize was driven not by the U.S., but by the Southern Cone militaries’ perception that Marxism had to …

La Identidad De Los Carabineros De Chile: The Evolving Identity Of Chile's National Police Force And The 1973 Military Coup, Jeffrey O. Lamson

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of Los Carabineros de Chile, Chile's national police force, from their origins under Carlos Ibáñez in 1927 until their involvement in the 1973 military coup against President Salvador Allende. Various presidencies primarily used this corps during this period as a weapon against popular mobilization and thus influenced the development of the Carabineros' institutional identity. To explore how this identity evolved, this thesis examines primary sources, mostly in the form of newspapers found in the National Archives in Santiago, Chile, that illuminate the Carabineros' relations with the public. The knowledge of the Carabineros' institutional identity contributes …

"Your Majesty's Friend": Foreign Alliances In The Reign Of Henri Christophe, Jennifer Yvonne Conerly

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In modern historiography, Henri Christophe, king of northern Haiti from 1816-1820, is generally given a negative persona due to his controlling nature and his absolutist regime, but in his correspondence, he engages in diplomatic collaborations with two British abolitionists, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, in order to improve his new policies and obtain international recognition. This paper argues that the Haitian king and the abolitionists engaged in a mutual collaboration in which each party benefitted from the correspondence. Christophe used the advice of the British abolitionists in order to increase the power of Haiti into a powerful black state, and …

Hipólito Irigoyen's Second Administration: A Study In Administrative Collapse, Herman John Hobi

Dissertations and Theses

In 1928 Hipo´lito lrigoyen was the most popular President that the Argentine people had elected. Two years later his popularity had evaporated and a few hundred military cadets ousted the government. The reasons go beyond this two-year period. Argentina, contrary to popular belief, did not have a democratic tradition. The nation had been ruled by the dominant economic interests up to 1916. In 1916, Hipo´lito Irigoyen was elected to his first term. The people expected him to provide them with a decent and honorable life. But in choosing the legal path of elections instead of revolution Irigoyen pre-empted any revolutionary …

The Invocation Of The Monroe Doctrine In The Anglo-Venezuelan Boundary Dispute., John F. Soren

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.